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Triangle Region, Including Durham Makes Amazon Top 20

As I am sure many of you have read last Thursday, Amazon made their first round of “cuts” on the location decision for their second headquarters and narrowed the pool of applicants down from 238 to 20. I would like to thank Durham’s business and community leaders that invested hours of hard work as an important part of a Triangle regional response to Amazon’s request for submittals.

Multiple Durham sites were submitted for consideration in the regional package but more importantly Durham played an integral part in telling the region’s story of a diverse, collaborative, inclusive and innovative economy with a community that aligns with the corporate culture at Amazon.

Yet when the news broke there was no mention of Durham or any of the regional team outside of our state capital. If you were like me, you were left with a feeling of reluctant satisfaction.

We sought clarification with our regional partners as well as economic development leaders from the state. The team reached out directly to Amazon to clarify that it was the Research Triangle Region that was still under consideration. On Friday evening, Amazon confirmed what we had anticipated and it was in fact the entire region (including Durham) that was selected to advance.

We will continue to build on our regional media message and sustain our work collaboratively with our Triangle partners into the next phase of this process. It is a testament to the region’s thriving business community, talent pipeline, creative culture and quality of life to be considered as one of the finalists. We are excited to hear about the next steps involved in bringing Amazon to the region and will keep the Durham community informed as additional information becomes available.

Geoff Durham
President & CEO

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